Menu Plan: Green Week!

 

Happy St Patrick's Week!

Being 3/4 Irish I always look forward to planning my St. Patty's Menu. But I have tired of Corned Beef and Cabbage, so I branched out this year with a springy soup and a twist on Irish Soda Bread.

I'm also trying to lose a few pounds from winter and improve my cholesterol, so I'm planning for that too. Oh, and I want to take advantage of spring produce! The Allrecipes.com site is helping me do all that and make my menu-planning faster and more efficient.

I am finally getting the hang of using their new Menu Planner program.  It's not the most intuitive design, but it's proving worth the trouble. I open the Menu Planner, give my Menu Plan a name (like Mar 14-Mar21, or St Pat's Day), and save. It asks me if I want a one-meal menu (like a St. Pat's Brunch maybe) or a multi-day plan. After making my selection for multi-day, a window opens with 5 boxes. Into those I drag and drop the recipes that I have either saved in My Recipe Box, or from the page the recipe is on I can choose to click on Add to Menu, and it will drop it in. (I will have to actually drag it to the day I want, but it will be in the queue.) I can add as many days as I want.

The next great part is that the Shopping List is being compiled automatically! When I save it I can edit in or out those ingredients I already have or extra stuff that I also want to pick up like bread.
This service is member-supported, but the reasonable cost is worth it!
 So here's what I planned:


Monday. Made with some-lo-fat ingredients, but doesn'y taste that way. We found it very comforting.
Easy Chicken and Broccoli Casserole
Sliced tomatoes with a vinaigrette dressing


Tuesday. Pioneer Girl Meeting
Frozen Entree




Wednesday
Pasta Primavera with Smoked Gouda
Green salad.
Crusty loaf of bread




Thursday. Happy Vegetarian St. Patrick's Day!
I kept it light and meatless!
Spinach, Leek, and White Bean Soup
Cheddar Onion Soda Bread


Friday.
We are studying Marco Polo and I wanted to try something with the flavors that he would encounter on his travels through the Middle East. While a tagine is traditionally Moroccan, the spices and fruits would be authentic to the spice trade on the Silk Road. Besides I just tried some at a homeschool co-op cooking class and HAD to make it, without or without a Marco Polo study!

Chicken Tagine 
I can't find eggplant this week, so am substituting already skinned and chunked butternut squash to replicate the texture, if not the taste. Never knew you could buy it like that!
served with couscous


Saturday.
Traditionally Father R's day to cook simply because he likes to!


Sunday
I'm sure there will be some great leftovers for tonight. A Day of Rest from the kitchen.

Clog over to Organized Junkie and more Menu Plan Mondays!

Japan Earthquake: Being There in Mind and Spirit

I normally wake slowly and peacefully (or grudgingly and grumpily) to a classical music station, so it was the last place I would have expected to hear the news of the earthquake in Japan, so when my half-open ears took in "greatest earthquake in Japan's 140 years of recording, " I at first thought this must be some anniversary of an earlier quake that was being remembered. But a minute more brought me fully awake as I grasped that  the understated announcer was describing the disaster that Japan was facing today.


I decided that this was one of those "teachable moments," even if an ugly one, a moment that I owed Mei a lesson on because this event would be talked about for days, weeks, even years from now and she deserved to have at least a simple understanding of its importance.  And how can we pray for those in need when we don't really understand what their needs are?

Thankful once again to be homeschooling in the Internet Age, I went straight to Enchanted Learning.com to print off information about tsunamis  to read (for that proved to be the more serious topic), quizzes to answer, and a map of Japan to label.  (I considered purchasing Hands Of a Child's Earthquakes lapbook or downloading a free one from  Homeschool Share. Lapbook Lessons has a free Japan lapbook. I may follow up with one of these.)

It became quickly apparent though that helping her to understand about the tragedy and guarding her against the grimness was going to be a delicate task in our instant-info age.  She actually turned her back on the mesmerizing video feeds of the engulfing waters, choosing to play with me instead, as if she wasn't interested.  God's way of shielding our children when He knows they're not ready for some things?

At another point I was checking the web for some update about the potential for a tsunami on the West Coast where we have several family members.  While on CNN.com, I clicked on their viewer uploads of texts and photos from people at the scene.  Unfortunately  she saw the unnerving post before I could shut it down: "I am dying."

Teachable moments are one thing. Living in them is another .

As I drove about our suburbs, I tried to grasp what the victims experienced in those moments when their cars were being swallowed by the encroaching waters. I looked at all of us in line at a stop-light, and imagined if it was us having our conversations, listening to music, thinking about our next errand and then--from nowhere-- watching ourselves being overtaken by a a sea growing before us, passing under our cars, rising, picking our vehicles off the pavement and now floating, crashing, overturning, and submerging us. The panic, the terror, the screams.

I look across the fields from our front window and imagine all of that simply washed away, scrubbed of houses, trees, schools, churches, people. 

As we cook a nice meal--just coincidentally fish and sticky rice, Japanese staples--I wonder what those families are eating, if anything.

Too horrible to think about and yet how I choose to enter into their last moments. And the lives of those who must go on. 

A woman, carrying a child on her back, walks over tsunami-drifted debris and mud in Rikuzentakada, Iwate Prefecture, Saturday morning, March 12, 2011 after Japan's biggest recorded earthquake slammed into its eastern coast Friday. (AP Photo/Kyodo News)

I've always felt that death by drowning, along with being buried alive, would have to be my least favorite way to go. I know My Savior, and I know where I'd be going, but I hope I don't have to go like that.

Father God, be with the people of Japan.

Charlotte Mason Will Do That to a Kid

Mom: What would you like to listen to on our 4-hour road trip, honey?"

10 year-old (spoken with a "duh" accent and eyeroll for effect) :  
Mendelssohn.

Music to my ears.
 The Best of Mendelssohn 
 
                           

Masters of Classical Music: Chopin

How The Dog Starts Our Day

It's a typical morning. Even though we close all bedroom and bathroom doors. Like they caution about leaving kids in cars, "It only takes a minute." The following all took place before breakfast.

Loves Q-tips. Must be used ones. This is what he's after in the trash. 

Simply rooting through the garbage is nothing special. 

For pencils, he also climbs onto chairs. So we have tried keeping them on a shelf next to the school table. He climbs on the table and reaches up to the shelf.

For toothbrushes, he climbs onto the toilet, then to the sink and walks around choosing who's he wants today. (Usually mine, but he has developed a taste for Father R's too.)

 

And then there are Mei's dolls. We have several "Venus di Milo's" with missing limbs. Also faces from "Night of the Living Dead." This is one that narrowly escaped with only chunks of hair ripped out.

It's a dangerous world in our house for anything that's not in a vault.

Bird's-Eye View of the Week: Snow Days: Another Reason to Homeschool

From the looks of posts on Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers' blog  there are LOTS of people's weeks being upended by snow disruptions. I can commiserate. Last year Old Man Winter had the Mid-Atlantic is his sights. Our PS kids lost so much schooltime, there weren't even enough "make-up" days at the end of the year to right the balance. Adjustments even  had to be made for graduation requirements.

Last year. Not to be repeated, we hope.

  At first, our homeschool's plan was to give a "snow day" when the PS closed. But after a couple of times of that, we adjusted to having half-days. This seemed fair since we can get done in about half the time of a PS kid's regular day, so Mei would be able to keep up with her studies and still be free to play with the neighbors who were sleeping in most days anyway!

   I think the Ambleside Online team even posted on their Yahoo Group site how to share AO with those PS families whose kids were getting woefully behind.

   I also feel sorry for the PS families who just don't know what to do with their kids!

"My kids are driving me crazy!" "My kids are bored!"

 "I'm tired of making cookies!"

 What a shame. When I read these things, I'm thankful that MY "blessing" is NOT bored, and that she does NOT drive me crazy--at least by being home anyway! :-D Snow Days: Another Reason to Homeschool.

      We had a "Surprise Snow"last week that caused a lot of chaos in the area, especially where the Grand-Robins live. Hundreds of thousands of outages and commuters stuck on DC roads for many, many hours, our fledged DD included. So once again, keeping to our routines as best as possible allowed school to continue in the midst of it. Yet we were able to flex and assist family members as well.
    This week's weather promised chaos and then didn't deliver, which can be chaotic anyway. Thus despite  the weather's best attempts to disrupt our educational routines, we marched onward. 

    In History, we've been reading about happenings on both Sides of the Pond. On America's side, from  This Country of Ours we read about Jamestown's beginnings through the Starving Time. I contrasted the horrors of surviving when 5/6ths of the population died--mostly from the results of their indolence---to the rather squeaky-clean site we had visited down in Virginia. Nonetheless, the site's webpage has lots of good teaching tools that we may use to advance our study. On the other side of the pond, from An Island Story is James I of England and the inspirational story of Jenny Geddes who stood up to the King and his "reforms" of the early Presbyterian Church in Scotland. Moral: Don't mess with a Scot, especially a woman!

     Enchanted Learning.com provided us with some quick color-and-fill-in-the-blank maps of Virginia to add to Mei's knowledge of the geography of the area. I've been sneaking in more Geography that way.

     Math was about as much fun as a fall on the ice a unit ago when Mei was confronted with Multiple-Digit Multiplication with Regrouping. Even the name sounds daunting.  She struggled so much with the addition part that she failed a test for the first time in her Math "Career." Testing the ideas of Amy Chua ,the now-famous , or infamous, Tiger Mother, I demanded that Mei work and rework each problem until it was correct. One day took four hours of math alone. I could feel the cold, hard stare of Charlotte "Short Lesson" Mason on my neck.   Whether or not it was worth the trouble, Mei has improved dramatically. She only got one problem wrong on the latest test. Because she is a dawdler and dreamer, perhaps knowing how painful reworking will be, she may be paying closer attention the first time around. Close attention. Now that's something Charlotte can agree with.

  Reading and Life

Mei was inspired by a Reading lesson to make the recipe she had studied. I never

would have taken the thing seriously, but

I'm glad she did. The Energy Bars were delicious and the best part was she made them with very little help from me. Masterly Inactivity. Now Charlotte can even be proud of me!

Art and Nature Study were combined through Harmony Art's Year 3 program through which we have lately focused on the works of John James Audubon. I carefully selected several of his prints to copy and hang in our Powder Room Gallery. These included our State Bird, the Little Auk as mentioned in Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter,  the Passenger Pigeon, a beautiful bird which we will never see in life due to its extinction, and an American Woodcock so we could see what our English Cocker Spaniel was bred to hunt. (We thought it was house cats and stuffed animals.) Mei created her most successful painting assignment yet of a blue jay from a life photo.



Music  Concluding the week was a field trip to the Meyerhoff to hear the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's BSO Kids Mid-Week concert  performance of  works by Beethoven narrated by the great composer himself! Where else are we going to hear concert hall performances for $6?? 

She liked this because it had a dog in it.

More Art Appreciation  Then we made it a double trip by stopping into the Walter's Art Museum and viewing the Renaissance and Baroque exhibits along with a quick trip through the special exhibit focusing on animals in  Medieval manuscripts. Seeing those books in person is so awe-inspiring! Impossible to imagine the hours and years that would go into the creation of ONE book! No wonder the printing press changed history!





We found a Rafael!



  



Anthing can make a jump,
but watch your step in the
Livng Room!

So with rain on top of snow Mei will get her exercise at the barn and then spend the afternoon riding around her own outdoor and truly  "indoor  arenas".  And that's how you get an education despite "snow days".

So how do you deal with bad weather?